(Full name Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson) Scottish novelist, short story writer, poet, essayist, and playwright.

An inventive prose stylist, Stevenson is the versatile author of classic works in several genres. Renowned for his adventure novels Treasure Island (1883) and Kidnapped: Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751 (1886), and for his outstanding work of supernatural horror The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Stevenson is additionally remembered as a travel writer and author of children's verse. Just as his famous stories of piracy and horror have placed him at the forefront of writers of romances, his unusual life and personality have made him one of literature's most intriguing individuals, to the extent that his biography has often overshadowed his literary reputation. Nevertheless, critics credit his continued esteem to the enduring appeal of his fiction, which features...